Yawn......

Don't you just hate those days when you have done absolutely nothing and still feel exhausted??? 

I do, today is one of those days, but the kids are about to get off the bus so I thought I would take a few minutes while I am waiting.

I left off telling about how we got our little 280 sq. foot (14x20) cabin in the dry. We were able to saw every piece of wood that was used to build it, we got the tin at a discount and our windows free when a relative remodeled their home. 

What came next was completely unexpected and unfortunate.

 My husband was putting a new tin roof on a home, he had just one piece left to put on and it started raining. He got up there to put that last piece on and slipped, herniating 3 discs in his back. I will forever blame myself for this injury because it was me who encouraged him to finish so we could get paid.

The next 4 months were rounds of doctors visits, steroid injections and unfortunately no paydays. All progress on the cabin came to a halt as we waited for him to heal. Our prayers were answered when after four months the doctor released him to go to work.

He worked 1 week and then  started to have excruciating pain in his leg. Upstairs to the ER he went, to find that he had developed a popliteal clot (behind the knee joint) while down on his back. This led to more doctors visits, Lovenox shots and Warfarin. It also put him out of work permanently. 

We went 2 more months without a payday, living hand to mouth and relying on my mother-in-law to buy diapers for our two babies. Times were tough back then, but we survived and I was given the opportunity to take over my husbands job at the hospital. It meant leaving our un-weaned daughter with my husband during the evening hours and working third shift (11pm-7am). I lasted 6 months before I fell asleep at the wheel, nearly killing myself on a winding, curvy road.

By this time John was feeling better, but still couldn't move around much, it fell on me to finish the inside of the cabin. So with the help of my mother-in-law (God Bless Her), we got the insulation and sheet rock to finish the cabin before winter. Now I had never done anything like this before, being a newby it was rather surprising to me how much work and effort it took to hang sheet rock. The walls weren't so bad, but when it came to the ceiling we had to do some finagling. 

If you'll remember we have a loft that only reaches half-way across our cabin. I found 2, 16 foot long 1x12's and stacking them on top of each other, I stretched them across from the loft to the cabin wall, making a plank to walk on so I could hang the sheet rock on the ceiling. We cut each piece of sheet rock in half (4x4) to make them more manageable for my weakling arms, and pushed our ratty old couch underneath the walk plank. John laid on the couch and used a 2x4 to help steady the piece of sheet rock as I put it up. I held the sheet rock with one hand and the drill with the other, using my head to hold the sheet rock tight against the rafters, I hung each piece. It was hard, back-breaking work, and as you can imagine, it looks horrible. The drywall is too thick in places overlapping and uneven in others, and the mud, oh the mud..... Let's just say I will NOT be posting any pictures of the inside of our cabin. :)

I have done many sheet rock jobs with my husband since then, but my mudding skills have not improved ;)